DEALERS COME DRESSED TO KILL

I bought a new suit yesterday. Navy blue, 48 extra long. I had been
wishfully hoping that the one I got back in 1998 would last me until my
unavoidable future date with J.C. Green and Sons, but alas, trying to cram
250 pounds into a space meant for 225 had become intolerable.

I don't necessarily have to wear one at work, but even if I did wear one, I
doubt that it would fool too many. I had even managed to find a church that
doesn't seem to mind when I show up (infrequently) without wearing one.

I did buy a tuxedo awhile back, just for special occasions such as
accepting awards, but as you would probably guess, it's still in an
unopened box. Come to think of it, about the only times I wear a suit
nowadays is for weddings or funerals.

For weddings, I usually have a little while to get ready. But funerals
always seem to have a nasty habit of popping up at the most unexpected, and
inconvenient, times. So far this year, I've been to one wedding and three
funerals. Humm. That sounds very familiar.

Anyway, I went to a funeral just a few days ago. It was due to the
senseless death from a drug overdose of yet another young man who was
really just starting out on life's journey.

Even though I had watched the boy grow up as a friend of my son, I didn't
know what to say to his grieving parents because I had grown up in a
different world.

For example, when my senior class took our graduation trip to the beach,
someone suggested that we try smoking "grass." We pulled up some of the
front yard, twisted the tobacco out of a Taryington cigarette (charcoal
filter!) and refilled it with lawn. After puffing away in frustration for
the longest time, another classmate said he had heard that banana peels
would do it.

But tales from Bumpkinville aside, I'm not exactly speaking from
inexperience here because I found out later on, all right.

In fact, hypocrite, is what some who are reading this column might be
calling me about now. I've surely earned that label a few times in my life.
But thank the good Lord that I was allowed to be a child, when I was a child.

And thanks, that I was able to seek my way in life without looking at the
world through a foggy haze. I'm thankful that pond scum weren't waiting
around the corner every afternoon to push their "candy" on me when I got
out of school.

Now, some of you might think that I'm being a little too rigid here, but in
fact, I'm quite liberal on this subject.

You see, it's because I want the national print media to keep on publishing
pictures of over-the-hill hippies, out in California, puffing away on their
"medicinal" marijuana and telling me how debilitated they are without it.

And I want this newspaper to keep on printing the coordinated Your View
column letters from around the country that tell me how important it is for
us to legalize recreational drugs to insure our "freedoms."

Because if they stop doing that, I'm afraid that I might get distracted
while I'm pulling the labels off of this new suit ... and forget, just how
important legalizing drug use really is.

Steve Bryant owns and operates a business in High Point.